Science Fiction Though the Decades

Sunday, January 4, 2015

1971: Gray Matters (Hjortsberg, William)

Intentionally whimsical, but errant and
purposeless (3/5)

I, like many other browsers of the
science fiction stacks at the wonderfully smelling secondhand bookstores, have
never heard of William Hjortsberg. Those same people probably also love taking
a chance at pulling down a book by an obscure author from the 1970s. The cover
may had been intriguing enough, but it was the synopsis that hooked me.

As it turns out, Hjortsberg is a name
of little lasting permanence in the world of SF. Aside from Gray Matters, he
only had two other novels in the span of a decade: Alp (1969), which
seems to be a humorous story of sorts, and Falling Angel (1978), a
detective novel infused with witchcraft, voodoo, and horror and was made into
the movie Angel Heart (1987) with Mickey Rourke, Robert De Niro, and Lisa
Bonet. Around the same period, Hjortsberg also published five shorter works
between 1973 and 1985 which are SF-themed, none of which I’ve ever come across.

Rear cover synopsis:

“It is the twenty-fifth century. People
have been reduced to Cerebromorphs—disembodied brains stored in tanks and wired
to computers, passing from layer to layer, awaiting liberation at the top level
as enlightened beings rehoused in new perfect bodies. But there is one brain
that engineers a spectacular escape—with bizarre and tragic repercussions for
its fellow Cerebromorphs.”

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Denton Kalbfleischer (nicknamed Skeet)
was only twelve when the plane he was in crashed into East Cicero, in which he
was the only survivor—barely. Near death with broken bones and ruptured organs,
with no family to sign off on his behalf, and without any choice in any regard,
Skeet’s brain was removed and placed in limbo yet alive. The science of the era
was unable to communicate with the floating hunk of gray matter, so it remained
in a class container gathering dust as a curiosity. Nearly thirty years later, technology
progressed to the point where communication could be held; Skeet’s first words:
“What time is breakfast?” (18). Later, he was also the first mind to be linked
to the System and stored away.

Obu Itubi was a Nigerian
sculptor from a couple of centuries after Skeet. Much later and stored as a
digital mind, Obu spends his time researching bee dancing patterns and other
insect movements for the sake of art, but this dalliances aren’t appreciated by
the Auditors, the slightly-more enlightened minds which govern the time and
activities of the lower-caste minds. Though he may not be the most conversant
in the matters of the Zen koan, he is a crafty man with a will… and there
happens to be a way. His rebellious idea of escape from the System is absurd
since he’s only an immobile brain, but the maintenance robots are open to human
command and susceptible to errant orders. Ensconced in a metallic hopper, Obu
makes his escape while wreaking havoc upon the facility which houses all the
System’s brains… and the untold award of reaching enlightenment—perfect human
bodies for use upon the virgin earth.

Meanwhile, Vera Mitlovic is a Czech
actress of certain reputation on the silver screen and on the satin sheets; as
she loses herself in narcissistic nostalgia, an Auditor chides her for not
taking her daily meditative exercises for the last three days and cuts her off
from the hypnotic mirror of her past. Even
though she was beyond geriatric when she had her cerebrectomy, she still
experiences loneliness and relives her experiences with past lovers, past
husbands, past abuse, and past murder. Her loneliness and experience (ahem)
make her suitable for a memory-merge with the young, naïve Skeet. As he has
been unable to reach transcendence through normal means even after completing
numerous doctoral degrees and as his true ambition is to be a cowboy, the
Auditing Committee decide that he must experience his first sexual encounter in
order to mature and, hopefully, attain a new level of awareness. Once together
on a virtual island, their mutual eagerness soon earns Skeet “another merit
badge, one not awarded by the Boy Scouts” (52).

As Obu makes his escape from Center
Control, he leaves explosions blossoming behind him. The surges of power that
result from the concussions strike through the circuits of the System and
causes damage to many pieces of hardware and, notably, one piece of wetware—Skeet’s
brain, which becomes a cinder at the bottom of his brain’s tank. This leaves
Vera alone on her virtual island, yearning for the eager young kisses of her
inexperienced lover. After some time, her direct Auditor—ex-pilot Phillip
Quarrels (and ex-lover, actually)—decides to memory-merge with her at timed
intervals in order to assess the progress of young Skeet. When he learns that
Skeet has disappeared from the memory-merge, his attention turns to the cherubic
delights of the reverse-aging Vera. As she relives her nubile lust, her mind also
returns her to her past tragedies with men. Here, Phillip is a willing
participant but an unwilling victim.

On the surface of the earth, Obu has
taken his metallic hopper into the forested unknown. His hopper, meant for the
level surfaces of the underground Center Control, is unable to nimbly navigate
the rocky terrain and he ends up tipping over, rendering the robot incapacitated
and with limited power to sustain him. Luckily, a band of transcended humans
discovers the overturned robot and extract Obu’s brain. Patient, saintly, and enlightened
yet simple and practical, the scantily clad humans take Obu’s brain back to the
Center, where they witness the carnage of the structural damage and the fleshy
debris of the bodies that had been meant for the ready minds of the Cerebromorphs.
Picking through the mangled bodies, the small band of humans choose one for Obu’s
transferences, which the Center reluctantly allows him even though he’s not one
of the transcended. Out on the surface of the earth, Obu first relishes his
freedom but then resorts to his un-enlightened corporal vices of drink and
lust.

As Vera and Phillip tackle their
existential lives in virtual reality through Vera’s passion and verbal circumlocution,
Obu and his newly found fellow un-enlightened partner tackle their own corporal
existential lives.

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At
the age of 28, Hjortsberg, through careful consideration, pinpointed his
desired writing technique: in his own words, he would make
“the whole thing up from day to day
without a clue what would happen next. I wanted only to surprise myself”.
Writing along these lines on whim, he says it took him a
year to write Gray Matters… that amounts to half a page per day on a
whim for the 160-page novel. It certainly reads like it was written by the seat
of his pants. The beginning is objective and technical, sparse with dialogue—all
a sandy foundation for a whimsical novel about every character having a hot
spot in their britches for some coital action (of one sort or another).

At first, the whimsical dalliances
of the author are good (a fairly non-descript adjective but it feels right to
use here). I can be fun at times: the zany idea of a mind hijacking a
mechanical servitor, blindly winding through the corridors of the underground
Center, placing bombs behind it and leaving a path in its wake, then coming out
into the sunshine only to tip over helplessly. But the whimsical misdirections
and humorous misgivings are eclipses by the looming intention of thrusting as
much sex as possible, from as many characters as possible, into as much of the
plot even though it makes very little sense in the end—again, here comes the whim.

It’s not just sex though. It’s too
descriptive and, shall I say, deviant to be a whim. Perhaps most of the plot
was whim—certainly—but this attention to detail to the superfluous sex scenes
distract from the core messageintentiondirection body of
the so-called plot. Many, dare I say all, of the scenes raise an eyebrow or two…
perhaps this is why Playboy printed a condensed version of the story and award
the author with a Playboy Editorial
Award for Best New Fiction Contributor.

(1) Eyebrow arch level 2/5: Just
a quarter of the way through, we meet our first passing thought of Vera’s
past-time sex life, where she recollects one past lover, “who lashed her naked
breasts with his gift offering of long-stemmed roses” (39).

(2) Eyebrow arch level 4/5: In
the very next paragraph, he remembers “her second husband’s playful habit of
sharing her with his Great Dane” (39).

(3) Eyebrow arch level 1/5: A
little later, along on the virtual beach with the sun and wind caressing her
hair, “She runs her hand down across her tummy and the fuzz of maiden floss,
cupping her sex, which hungers like the mouth of a raging vacuum cleaner” (46).

(4) Eyebrow arch level 5/5:
Phillip dreamily thinks of the exploits he has shared with the nymph Vera,
specifically,

Vera’s trick of inserting a knotted silk scarf
into his rectum (first lubricating the way with her ingenious tongue) and
reaching behind as she rides him like a piston-powered jockey to remove it, one
knot at a time, at the onset of his climax. (126)

That last one was the butt of in-the-know
office jokes for a good day or two—classically bad!

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But it’s not all bad, I mean, the
beginning is enticing and Obu’s revival into human form is interesting, but the
errant directions of the author’s whim is purposeless. If this is a measure of
Hjortsberg’s other work, then there’s little to look forward to expect bizarre
plot whims and bizarre sexual whims. Methinks I’ll pass on the rest of his
bibliography.